I'm getting a bit worried about Hurricane Ophelia.
It is now wound up to a category 2 with 105 mph winds and heading directly for my polytunnels. UK Met Office are forecasting sustained winds here of over 60 mph pretty much all day on Monday.
Hopefully the decision to use heavy duty polythene may pay off.

Damn it. We've had nothing but high winds and rain for the last 7-10 days!

The joiners haven't been able to finish the roof and we've had a drip through the living room ceiling where the rain is getting (following a screw apparently) since they built the frame (which is making some awful groaning noises in the wind). I'm not sure whether I'm more concerned for the ceiling or the roof frame.

It looks like they won't be back any time soon then. It looks like you'll get it worse than us, Tony - but, on a brighter note, our polytunnel is holding up nicely, thus far. Hope yours does the same.

Maggie

Never doubt that you can change history. You already have. Marge Piercy

It's just been upgraded and it's still 3 days away. Now I'm on the tip of the 80 - 90 mph section, with just about all of Ireland in the 70 - 80 mph zone.
Which puts you in the 50 - 60 mph section Maggie.

Well I've done all that I can, everything that's likely to be blown away is stowed in the barn, all other stuff weighted down. All I can do now is wait.
The forecast is bad, I suspect the road will be washed away again as the peak wind will coincide with high tide, plus of course the storm surge, so will be totally cut off for a while (probably)
The generator has been checked and is working OK and all the petrol cans are full so at least I can keep the freezers going.
Hopefully I'll post again later in the week when all the power lines have been repaired and the Internet is working again.

Never seen a shipping forecast like the one for here before, hurricane force 12 !!!

Forecast for Irish coastal waters from Carnsore Point to Roches Point to Mizen Head
Wind: Mainly southerly force 4 or 5, backing east to southeast this evening. Gradually increasing force 6 to gale 8 and gusty overnight. Winds becoming southerly early Monday morning and further increasing storm force 10 to violent storm force 11. Hurricane force 12 winds in parts.

The storm has hit Cork quite badly, they got it first this morning, it has been moving up the west coast and we are feeling the gusts, at the moment, this is no worse than we have had in the past, but the storm is still centred round Galway as far as I can make out. The whole of Ireland is closed, there are no shops open here now, the hospitals cancelled all appointments, no post, 350k plus without power, never encountered this sort of thing before, two people are dead down the south, we went out earlier to get beer and there are cars outside every house, so it would seem people heeded the warnings and are staying put. We still have power and internet at the moment, candles on standby, tonights is venison pie, unless the power goes off when it will be come stew as we have a gas hob, so at least we can cook.

It's been incredibly quiet here today, no wind and just a little rain but since about 3pm the sky has been a very strange colour.

I don't think we'll be getting much of Ophelia, all reports say it will either blow itself out or miss us, passing further south. The odd thing is the current wind/rain is definitely coming from the north.

Maggie

Never doubt that you can change history. You already have. Marge Piercy

Ophelia has now moved up the west coast of Ireland and is currently in Donegal and parts of Northern Ireland, the winds seem to be gusting now from the North West, which is the Atlantic which is right, it started out this morning blowing from the East and South and changed round about 3pm

All OK here and it's calmed down a lot. It was extremely windy from about 4am until it got dark this evening. No damage at all surprisingly thank goodness just no electricity and to cap it all, the generator doesn't work. The engine works but I didn't think to actually check it was making electricity yesterday. One thing, it's a right pain typing on a small phone.